Service Delivery Industrial Placement Review

A Service Delivery Industrial Placement I was responsible for ensuring that all IT services are delivered effectively, reliably, and securely across the organisation. The role provided a solid foundation in service management while allowing me to contribute meaningfully to the success of the organisation.
Some of my day-to-day responsibilities involved:
• Maintaining and monitoriing the IT systems that enable smooth day-to-day operations, ensuring that every department, from engineering to marketing, has the tools they need to function efficiently.
• Providing and maintaining the essential IT infrastructure, including servers, networks, and communication systems, both at Grove and racetracks around the world.
• Responding to and managing IT incidents, ensuring they are resolved quickly to minimise impact on business operations. This includes coordinating with the relevant teams to troubleshoot and fix issues.
• Overseeing the implementation of changes to IT services, ensuring that changes are well-planned, communicated, and executed with minimal disruption.
• Preparing and presenting service delivery reports to management, highlighting key metrics such as uptime, response times, and user satisfaction.
• Gathering feedback from users on IT services and identifying areas for improvement.

Yes, I was given a lot more responsibility than I initially expected for a placement role. I owned multiple pieces of work independently rather than just supporting others, for example, managing our Atlassian platform and building personalised dashboards for different teams. I also ran meetings and calls on my own, facilitating meetings with teams across the organisation.
I was also trusted with responsibilities during live incidents, including sending out incident communications, and with more strategic work like presenting a sustainability business case to stakeholders. That level of ownership was actually one of the things that exceeded my expectations going into the placement.

Definitely both. On the new side, I picked up change management from scratch since I started with no background in it. I also built dashboards for different teams, which pushed me to translate vague requests into something actually useful, and I learned incident communications the hard way, including from getting it wrong the first time.
On top of that, I also developed skills I already had from leading meetings and retrospectives independently which built up my confidence a lot, and presenting things like our sustainability business case to stakeholders that took my communication skills further than my studies ever did. I also turned theoretical IT service management knowledge into certified, applied skills through a few Atlassian certifications.

I received a strong level of support, especially from my mentor, who helped me navigate the placement and pushed me to take on more responsibility than the average placement would typically involve and my manager who pushed me to express my opinions and try completing tasks using my own reasoning even if it didn't work out in the end.
Beyond that, I had broader professional exposure across the business than I'd anticipated, which gave me access to guidance from people outside my immediate team too.

The culture was a real mix of fast-paced and casual, which worked well for me. Things moved quickly, especially with the pace of an F1 environment, but the atmosphere itself was relaxed rather than overly formal. People were genuinely collaborative, that came through in things like cross-team meetings, and the mentoring support I received, which made it easy to reach out to people even outside my immediate team.
Day-to-day, I would say I felt appropriately challenged without ever feeling unsupported. I was trusted with real ownership over projects, but I also always knew there was guidance available if I needed it, which struck a good balance between pushing my development and not leaving me to figure everything out alone.

I really enjoyed my placement, honestly more than I expected to going in. Being trusted with genuine ownership over projects made the experience feel meaningful rather than like typical placement-level work. The collaborative, fast-paced-but-casual culture suited me well, and having strong mentoring support meant I felt both challenged and backed up at the same time, which is a balance that's hard to find.
It wasn't without its harder moments, like getting to grips with systems and processes I had zero background in. But those challenges were part of what made it rewarding rather than something that took away from the experience. If anything, they gave me a much more realistic picture of what service delivery work actually involves day-to-day.
Overall, it's confirmed that this is genuinely the career path I want to pursue after graduating, which says a lot about how much I got out of it.

Yes